From nanny and barista to aspiring pop star

In April 2020, she released a song called “Pink Pony Club,” inspired by a night at a gay club. The song became popular on social media, with USA Today naming it one of the 10 best songs of 2020 and entertainment news website Vulture crowning it the song of the summer of 2021. Commercially, however, it fell short of Atlantic’s expectations and the label fired her, Roan told Pitchfork last year.

After a few months as a barista, Roan began taking part-time jobs as a nanny, production assistant and employee at a doughnut shop to pay the bills, she told People last year. All the while, she built a small following with her music on TikTok.

“My music wasn’t anything really big… We’re not talking about ‘Say So’ by Doja Cat when that went through the roof, nothing like that happened,” she said. “TikTok was just a way to show my personality and my inner life, but I feel like a lot of the time it was hell trying to juggle everything as an independent artist and also have a part-time job.”

Today, the 26-year-old is a rising pop star with four singles on the Billboard Hot 100, appearances on NBC’s “The Tonight Show” and CBS’ “The Late Show,” a pizza party with Elton John and a new album on the way.

“It feels like I’ve been right all along,” Roan said on “The Tonight Show” last month. “It feels like I’ve made it. I mean, I feel like I’ve already made it.”

Roan’s journey from struggling independent artist to rising sensation was likely made easier by a connection: Her producer at Atlantic was Dan Nigro, who also works with Olivia Rodrigo. Roan opened for Rodrigo’s Sour Tour in 2022 before signing with Island Records last year.

As Rodrigo became more popular, so did Roan. Earlier this year, Roan opened for part of Rodrigo’s Guts World Tour, which gave her a 32% increase in streaming performances in a single weekend, Billboard reported in February. Her follow-up single, “Good Luck, Babe!”, was released in April and was an instant success on streaming platforms like Spotify and on the Billboard Top 100.

The sudden jump made Roan a star and presented her with new career challenges. “I want to be honest with the audience: I’m just a little uncomfortable today,” she said during a performance last month in Raleigh, North Carolina. “I think my career is just moving really fast and it’s really hard to keep up. I’ll just be honest… I’m not having an easy time today.”

Feeling overwhelmed at work is a familiar concept, and experts have plenty of tips for dealing with it in a healthy and productive way. “I’ve found that changing the grammar of your self-talk can increase your mental strength and resilience,” performance coach Steve Magness wrote for CNBC Make It in 2022. “It’s simple and straightforward: Replace ‘I’ with ‘you.'”

Using first-person personal pronouns can evoke negative emotions, Magness explained. Instead, tell yourself, “You can make up for this mistake” or “You will come out of this job search with your dream role.”

Or try former Navy SEAL Jocko Willink’s strategy. When he’s feeling overwhelmed, he creates a huge to-do list and spends a few days tackling each task to get out of his mental slump, he told Make It in 2019.

“I like to go on the offensive,” Willink said, noting that each workday in which I have to catch up often lasts about 12 to 14 hours. “It’s much better for me to suffer and toil hard for three days than to endure the constant pressure that weighs on you for months.”

Disclosure: NBCUniversal is the parent company of NBC and CNBC.

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